The following exquisite lyric is among the passages
with which these judgments are sustained:

“If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
Then sleep, dear,
sleep;
And not a sorrow
Hang any tear on your eyelashes;
Lie still and
deep
Sad soul, until like sea-wave
washes
The rim o’ the sun to-morrow,
In eastern sky.

But wilt thou cure thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
Then die, dear,
die;
’Tis deeper, sweeter,
Than on a rose bank to lie
dreaming
With folded eye;
And then alone, amid the beaming
Of love’s stars, thou’lt meet
her
In eastern sky.”

* * * *
*

WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.

Praed, it has always seemed to us, was the cleverest
writer in his way that has ever contributed to the
English periodicals. His fugitive lyrics and
arabesque romances, half sardonic and half sentimental,
published with Hookham Frere’s “Whistlecraft”
and Macaulay’s Roundhead Ballads, in Knight’s
Quarterly Magazine, and after the suspension of
that work, for the most part in the annual souvenirs,
are altogether unequaled in the class of compositions
described as vers de societie.—­Who
that has read “School and School Fellows”,
“Palinodia”, “The Vicar”, “Josephine”,
and a score of other pieces in the same vein, does
not desire to possess all the author has left us,
in a suitable edition? It has been frequently
stated in the English journals that such a collection
was to be published, under the direction of Praed’s
widow, but we have yet only the volume prepared by
a lover of the poet some years ago for the Langleys,
in this city. In the “Memoirs of Eminent
Etonians,” just printed by Mr. Edward Creasy,
we have several waifs of Praed’s that we believe
will be new to all our readers. Here is a characteristic
political rhyme:

VERSES

Sleep, Mr. Speaker, ’tis surely
fair
If you mayn’t in your bed, that
you should in your chair.
Louder and longer now they grow,
Tory and Radical, Aye and Noe;
Talking by night and talking by day.
Sleep, Mr. Speaker, sleep while you may!

Sleep, Mr. Speaker; slumber lies
Light and brief on a Speaker’s eyes,
Fielden or Finn in a minute or two
Some disorderly thing will do;
Riot will chase repose away
Sleep, Mr. Speaker, sleep while you may!

Sleep, Mr. Speaker. Sweet to men
Is the sleep that cometh but now and then,
Sweet to the weary, sweet to the ill,
Sweet to the children that work in the
mill.
You have more need of repose than they—­
Sleep, Mr. Speaker, sleep while you may!